Build-in-public audience is not your market. I learned the the slow way
The author reflects on the disconnect between building an audience in public and finding actual customers for their product. They emphasize that engagement from fellow builders does not equate to market demand for their software aimed at freelancers. The article highlights the importance of identifying the right channels to reach potential customers rather than focusing solely on audience-building efforts.
- ▪The author initially found success in building an audience among fellow founders but realized they were not the target market for their product.
- ▪AI has made building easier, leading to a noisy environment where applause from peers can be mistaken for product traction.
- ▪The author stresses the importance of being present in the right communities where potential customers are, rather than just focusing on public engagement.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
One of my posts on this site did 500 views and 50 comments in 24 hours. For a solo founder with no following, that felt like a win, and in one sense it was. Then I looked at who was in the thread. Founders. Builders. Other indie hackers. People I genuinely respect and learn from every week. Not one of them is the person I built my product for. I make software for freelancers. Designers, consultants, writers, people who bill by the hour and run their whole business out of four browser tabs. I have spent months getting good at writing for Indie Hackers, and the audience I built here is almost perfectly disjoint from the audience that pays me. That is not a tragedy. But it took me an embarrassingly long time to notice, and I think a lot of us are making the same quiet mistake right now.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hacker News (Newest).
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